What's broken is what you said in your first statement: even if I pay, they tend to also advertise. I also used to pay for a number of local / regional newspapers, but me paying them didn't get me quality journalism in a single transaction, it just got me better access to click-bait a lot of the time, and I got to feel good that maybe I was kinda supporting good press. (I also had a big problem with the fact that despite only wanting a digital subscription, I still got paper copies at my house, but because I wasn't supposed to, I had no way to stop it when I left town and I was stuck with a dozen papers on my driveway when I returned - nice and safe for me. I had to resort to borderline illegal harassing behavior to get them to stop.)

There are high quality publications that I think do consistently do the original research and due diligence behind their reporting, but they're mostly just not of interest to me anymore because they're national. I'm overloaded with political stuff in my face from other sources anyway - I'm happier just not reading good commentary on it in my spare time. I find BBC is a good source of world news, but they never ask me for money..